ABSTRACT While we know that African Americans are disproportionately arrested and incarcerated for drug-related crime, experience more severe consequences from substance use, and are disproportionately exposed to criminogenic risk factors ? there are several areas regarding the confluence of these factors that have been understudied. For instance, how do these concomitant factors converge within individuals and across time? Moreover, despite the higher risk of experiencing these outcomes, many African Americans successfully adapt, and yet we know little about the factors that protect individuals from drug use, criminal offending, criminal justice system interaction, and their adverse consequences. In the proposed project we seek to increase our understanding of patterns, pathways and trajectories of drug use, criminal behavior, and criminal justice system interactions for urban African Americans as well as identify the factors that decrease their co-occurrence and negative health consequences. The SPECIFIC AIMS of the proposed work are: (1) Identify and map the life course interrelationship of drug use and criminal justice system involvement for men and women, examining overlapping trajectories from adolescence to midlife, determining co-occurring patterns at each life stage, and estimating reciprocal effects over time; (2) Establish the short and long-term consequences of drug use, arrest and incarceration and their multiplicative impact on health; (3) Determine the individual and contextual protective factors that reduce the risk of and association between drug use, crime and criminal justice system involvement, and their negative health consequences. Method: Data are from the Woodlawn Study, which has followed nearly all children entering first grade in 1966 in Woodlawn, a poor Chicago community (N=1242) to age 52. Information from mothers and teachers, and official school, criminal, and death records have been integrated with reports from cohort members themselves to build an unmatched collection of comprehensive life course data of a population not adequately captured in national data sets. The experienced and uniquely qualified research team will employ sophisticated analytical approaches used in longitudinal research, including trajectory analysis, survival analysis, latent class analysis, latent transition analysis, structural equation modeling, conjunctive analysis of case configurations, and propensity score methods. The one-of-a-kind dataset spanning more than 40 years allows for in-depth exploration of both risk and protection. Implications: The project will challenge assumptions of African American homogeneity and help reframe the current deficit conceptualization to focus instead on protective effects, positive outcomes and recovery. The research will make unique and important contributions to understanding patterns, pathways and reciprocal effects between drug use, crime, and criminal justice system interaction for both men and women over the life course. Findings will inform intervention development by identifying critical pivotal points of influence along the life course that may alter risk trajectories. ! !